“Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue hapiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“The Solarians have given up something mankind has had for a million years; something worth more than atomic power, cities, agriculture, tools, fire, everything; because it's something that made everything possible (...) The tribe, sir. Cooperation between individuals.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“But he no longer feared the fear! It was not something to run from, that fear, but something to fight.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Victories over ingrained patterns of thought are not won in a day or a year.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“What was the first thing a man must do before he can be a man? He must be born. He must leave the womb; and once left, it could not be re-entered.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Mr Baley", said Quemot, "you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain".
"I'm not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can be made to apply in either case.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“..."You wash your hands, don't you?"
Bayley's eyes dropped to his hands. They were as clean as need be. "Yes," he said.
"All right. I suppose it's a measure of instability to feel such revulsion at dirty hands as to be unable to clean an oily mechanism by hand even in a emergency. Still, in the ordinary course of living, the revulsion keeps you clean, which is good.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“A robot may do nothing that, to its knowledge, will harm a human being; nor, through inaction, knowingly allow a human being to come to harm.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Baley distrusted overstatement and had no liking for the armchair deducer who discovered certainty rather than probability in the workings of logic.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“It is as much my job to prevent harm to mankind as a whole as yours is to prevent harm to man as an individual.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“You lack the capacity to decipher this particular puzzle.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“If a robot can be manipulated into doing harm to a man, it means only that we must extend the powers of the positronic brain. One might say we ought to make the human better. That is impossible, so we will make the robot more foolproof.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“On Earth, we have a continuous influx of young people who are willing to change because they haven't had time to grow hard set in their ways. I suppose there's some optimum. A life long enough for real accomplishment and short enough to make way for youth at a rate that's not too slow.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Without the interplay of human against human, the chief interest in life is gone; most of the intellectual values are gone; most of the reason for living is gone.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Well, not the stuff they use in robotics, which I wouldn’t follow, but sociological relationships I can handle. For instance, I’m familiar with the Teramin Relationship.” “The what, sir?” “Maybe you have a different name for it. The differential of inconveniences suffered with privileges granted: dee eye sub jay taken to the nth——” “What are you talking about?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Surely the relationship between inconveniences suffered and privileges granted was part of the very essentials of learning how to handle people without an explosion. A private”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Ah, the future good!” Leebig’s eyes glowed with passion and he seemed to grow less conscious of his listener and correspondingly more talkative. “A simple concept, you think. How many human beings are willing to accept a trifling inconvenience for the sake of a large future good? How long does it take to train a child that what tastes good now means a stomach-ache later, and what tastes bad now will correct the stomach-ache later? Yet you want a robot to be able to understand?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Surely the relationship between inconveniences suffered and privileges granted was part of the very essentials of learning how to handle people without an explosion.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“What phrase was that, sir?” “You said something about interviewing people face to——” He shook his head, his tongue dabbing quickly at his lips. “I would rather not say it. I think you know what I mean. The phrase conjured up the most striking picture of the two of us breathing—breathing one another’s breath.” The Solarian shuddered. “Don’t you find that repulsive?” “I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of it so.” “It seems so filthy a habit. And as you said it and the picture rose in my mind, I realized that after all we were in the same room and even though I was not facing you, puffs of air that had been in your lungs must be reaching me and entering mine. With my sensitive frame of mind——” Baley said, “Molecules all over Solaria’s atmosphere have been in thousands of lungs. Jehoshaphat! They’ve been in the lungs of animals and the gills of fish.” “That”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Baley’s lips twitched. He had guessed that in some ways robotic logic must fall short and he was convinced of it now. As the roboticist had said: Logical but not reasonable.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Baley tried to picture a world as a sphere being lit and unlit as it turned. He found it hard to do and felt scornful of the so-superior Spacers who let such an essential thing as time be dictated to them by the vagaries of planetary movements.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
Isaac Asimov
Born place: in Petrovichi, Russian Federation
Born date January 2, 1920
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“When the sun is strong and the air is warm, however, we shout greetings to one another down the lengths of long driveways and from the windows of our cars as we pass; we hold our heads high as we walk, staring up into the sky with our eyes shut and our faces widened by smiles. We breathe in deeply the summery air, but this sort of inhalation doesn’t result in a sigh; it’s a precursor to a purr, or the moans one might make during a backrub. We no longer mope, we no longer grouse. We are filled with energy. Although”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from Midwives
“I assumed everything bad in the world could happen, because everything bad in the world already did happen.”
― Gillian Flynn, quote from Dark Places
“At last he found the branching stream that flowed down from Blue Valley, and now he was guided by the little stone beaver that climbed the cliff.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Centennial
“Disorder is inherent in stability. Civilized man doesn't understand stability. He's confused it with rigidity. Our political and economic and social leaders drool about stability constantly. It's their favorite word, next to 'power.'
'Gotta stabilize the political situation in Southeast Asia, gotta stabilize oil production and consumption, gotta stabilize student opposition to the government' and so forth.
Stabilization to them means order, uniformity, control. And that's a half-witted and potentially genocidal misconception. No matter how thoroughly they control a system, disorder invariably leaks into it. Then the managers panic, rush to plug the leak and endeavor to tighten the controls. Therefore, totalitarianism grows in viciousness and scope. And the blind pity is, rigidity isn't the same as stability at all.
True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.”
― Tom Robbins, quote from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
“For a moment the highlander lay quietly and studied the room in silent leisure, allowing the sleep to disperse and his rested mind to awaken fully.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from The Sword of Shannara
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